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    Halls of Horror: A Ten Story Collection
    Halls of Horror: A Ten Story Collection
    Halls of Horror: A Ten Story Collection
    Ebook142 pages2 hours

    Halls of Horror: A Ten Story Collection

    By Dale T. Phillips

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    About this ebook

    This collection of ten tales of horror involves monsters, mayhem, and murder: everything from war to everyday homicide, to otherworldly terrors from hell dimensions. The horror may be internal or external, in your heart or in your cellar. Here are people making bad choices, and people reacting to terrible situations. These are stories to make you think, tremble, and shiver with fright-- and lock your doors at night-- even though it may not do any good...

    The author had Stephen King as a writing teacher, and the book is dedicated to him.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGenretarium Publishing
    Release dateMar 18, 2013
    ISBN9781386363613
    Halls of Horror: A Ten Story Collection
    Author

    Dale T. Phillips

    A lifelong student of mysteries, Maine, and the martial arts, Dale T. Phillips has combined all of these into the Zack Taylor series. His travels and background allow him to paint a compelling picture of a man with a mission, but one at odds with himself and his new environment. A longtime follower of mystery fiction, the author has crafted a hero in the mold of Travis McGee, Doc Ford, and John Cain, a moral man at heart who finds himself faced with difficult choices in a dangerous world. But Maine is different from the mean, big-city streets of New York, Boston, or L.A., and Zack must learn quickly if he is to survive. Dale studied writing with Stephen King, and has published over 70 short stories, non-fiction, and more. He has appeared on stage, television (including Jeopardy), and in an independent feature film. He co-wrote and acted in a short political satire film. He has traveled to all 50 states, Mexico, Canada, and through Europe. He can be found at www.daletphillips.com

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      Book preview

      Halls of Horror - Dale T. Phillips

      Copyright 2012, 2024 Dale T. Phillips

      Cover Design copyright 2012, 2024 Melinda Phillips:

      All rights reserved.

      Kamikaze Hipsters was first published in

      Dark Valentine, Winter 2010

      Rummy was first published in House of Horror, Nov 2009

      The Pit was first published in Ethereal Gazette, Dec 2007

      Carnival of Pain was first published in Dark Valentine, Oct 2010

      Locust Time was first published in Fungi, May 2011

      Moose Tracks was first published in

      An Electric Tragedy, July 2011

      Body English was first published in

      Gluttonlumps Chilling Tales, Oct 2008

      Try these other works by Dale T. Phillips

      Shadow of the Wendigo (Supernatural Thriller)

      Neptune City (Mystery)

      Locust Time (Suspense)

      Desert Heat (Mystery)

      The Zack Taylor Mystery Series

      A Memory of Grief

      A Fall From Grace

      A Shadow on the Wall

      A Certain Slant of Light

      A Sharp Medicine

      A Darkened Room

      A Great Reckoning

      Story Collections

      Crime Time (Mystery/Crime)

      Fables and Fantasies (Fantasy)

      More Fables and Fantasies (Fantasy)

      The Last Fables and Fantasies (Fantasy)

      Deadly Encounters (3 Zack Taylor Mystery/Crime Tales)

      The Return of Fear (Scary Stories)

      Five Fingers of Fear (Scary Stories)

      Crooked Paths (Mystery/Crime)

      More Crooked Paths (Mystery/Crime)

      The Last Crooked Paths (Mystery/Crime)

      Strange Tales (Magic Realism, Paranormal)

      Apocalypse Tango (Science Fiction)

      Halls of Horror (Horror)

      Jumble Sale (Different Genres)

      The Big Book of Genre Stories (Different Genres)

      Non-fiction Career Help

      How to be a Successful Indie Writer

      87 Ways to Sell More Books

      How to Improve Your Interviewing Skills

      Sign up for my newsletter to get special offers

      http://www.daletphillips.com

      DEDICATION

      To Stephen King, who wrote and taught, and showed that a kid from Maine with nothing but imagination and a will to type and persevere could be a writer

      CONTENTS

      Foreword

      What are you afraid of? Are all your fears external? Things That Go Bump in the Night? Are you afraid of war, monsters, cancer, death from an infinite number of sources? Some other person or happenstance that tears into you or your loved ones, something from outside of you that smashes your world apart? The End of the World, maybe. That’s pretty scary.

      Or maybe you’re afraid of what lies within yourself: the Mr. Hyde that lurks inside us, with ravenous appetites for destruction. A fury that can be unleashed by a traffic altercation, a divorce, a taunting remark in a bar.

      We live in a world where many experience real horror with dismaying frequency. Some of us are lucky enough to escape that, and find our entertainment in stories where someone else is menaced. The horror tale has a long and noble tradition, handed down from our cavemen ancestors, who told stories around the campfire. Maybe back then it was wolves that were the menace, or that weird sound that came from over the hill. We know that horror can come from a known thing that is terrible, but far worse is something not known.

      Fear is all around us. We fear what we cannot control, and so our world is a place of constant fear that something or someone might get us. The crazy mugger with a knife, the car accident, the doctor telling you about the spot he found on your X-ray. Maybe we don’t have to fear otherworldly terrors, and so we focus on what we know we should be afraid of. We like the feeling of watching a character run for their life, as long as we don’t have to do it ourselves. Here are some tales to let you feel that terror, that frisson, while remaining safe.

      I had a great teacher when I was learning to write—Stephen King, the Master of the modern horror genre. He pulled the genre from the gutter, and gave it legs to shamble forth and disturb us all. He has many imitators, but few can write as well or as memorably. I certainly bow to his skill, and offer my own tales, along with some help from friends. This collection has different kinds of horror, and will hopefully leave you with some scary images to linger affectionately in your psyche.

      The title for Kamikaze Hipsters came while I was waiting in a doctor’s office, and in a morbid state of mind. I started writing without having any idea where the story was going. The direction came along in due time, and provided a tale of suffering for art. Katherine Tomlinson, who was editor at Dark Valentine, loved the title and the tale, and featured it with fabulous artwork.

      Rummy is about the terror we have in modern society of not being successful, of losing our grip on the middle class, and being relegated to the horror of those who have failed. Astute readers will note the characters names are echoed in the annals of the labor movement in this country, a history that too many do not know about. There is meaning in that resonance, for without the sacrifice and protest of many faceless, nameless thousands who put themselves on the line in harm’s way, we would not have the comfortable lives we enjoy. And yet we live in times where the loss of a job can well mean the loss of our livelihood, our health, and possibly our families. High stakes indeed.

      The Pit poses a situation of dire peril, where a man is trapped underground. It gets worse, though, for there is something else down there with him. The dead may be the lucky ones...

      Carnival of Pain is a flat-out homage to Ray Bradbury, especially his masterwork Something Wicked This Way Comes. If you haven’t read it, you should. The carnival represents the darkness from outside that comes to town as a menace, and has been done many times.

      Locust Time is a story with a central image that sticks in the minds of people long after they’ve read it. I had a bit of help on the ending from Pierre Comtois, editor of Fungi, who suggested the way to keep the first-person voice to tell of the final horror.

      The Last Battle is a tale of the ultimate horror, war. For more than ten thousand years we’ve been killing each other, with no end in sight. Maybe we should think about alternatives to mass murder while there’s still some of us left. This tale features a French soldier in Vietnam, but not the first French army to suffer defeat, and not the last invaders of Vietnam to suffer defeat. You’d think that some could learn from terrible mistakes, but humans are slow to catch on. After the Great War, it was thought to be the War to End All Wars. And yet the same idiots who had lost almost an entire generation of young men went back to slaughtering each other barely twenty years later, and created another World War. Plus ca change...

      Moose Tracks comes from the Allagash of Maine (the state where I grew up), and where I heard tales of these creatures and how dangerous they are, despite their placid appearance. After this story was first published, I heard even more stories about moose encounters. Makes you wonder...

      Body English is a story I originally wrote when I was taking writing classes from Stephen King. He liked the tale, which was a bit gorier then. I’ve since scaled back the nasty, but hopefully leaving enough in there for your entertainment.

      The Silver Web is a Cthullu-mythos tale, the brainchild of my friend Tom Chenelle. His passion for the tale was such that I had to write it up, and I think it adds to the classic canon of the world of the Lovecraft lovers.

      And for the last tale, Bless Me, Father, we have the first published story by talented writer Matthew Phoenix. This story was so well-liked by Necrotic Tissue, that they raised the pay scale for it to that of a professional. That is the highest compliment in the short story world of small markets. It’s a fun little tale, with some sly humor to go along with the scary bits.

      I hope you enjoy these stories. Certainly hard-nosed editors with little money to spend liked them enough to pay for them and feature them in their magazines for their readers. You’ve got quite a screening for the work you’re reading.

      Kamikaze Hipsters

      Fueled by a combination of nicotine, caffeine, Benzedrine, and various additional pharmaceutical boosters, I got myself ready. With a testosterone bravado born of desperation I made my way downtown. Dressed in careful, pre-determined casualness, I passed along the sharp, wet streets, another pinball in the crowd, bouncing between the bumpers, inhaling the human odors in their marinating glory.

      My destination, the Watkins Gallery, was in a rundown neighborhood far along in the process of becoming gentrified. The money moved in, and the tenants were swept out. Messieurs Watkins were showing my current crop of pain, along with the works of three other sacrificial victims, our guts on display for the gimlet-eyed plebiscite.

      For me, I was done when the creating part was over, the rest meant nothing. But I had to work the crowd to earn enough sustenance to keep the wolf from the door. Somehow the public liked our artistic process. We ran our lives, dreams, and suffering through barrels of broken glass and nails, caught the shredded morsels that oozed out, and hammered the bits into pretty morsels for mass consumption.

      Only one of my fellow showees was genuine enough for me. The other two were faux-artists, or Fartists, but the deluded hoi-polloi still fawned over their work. My own work was nearing white-hot status, everything I poured into my canvasses coming to fruition. Who would have thought Pollock-like spatterings of blood and bits would attract the flockers? The gallery catalog hinted at some of the darker elements in my work, enough to assure my cutting-edginess. I would catch the sidelong looks, fear blending with the

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